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A Brit in Sweden

Learning lessons

There are a whole host of trite clichés that you are likely to find on travel/living abroad blogs. A particularly common utterance will be something about learning ‘life lessons’ while living in your new country.

Well, this happens to be a living abroad blog and so I thought I’d do a post about some of the important life lessons that I’ve learnt so far.

Snus

In Sweden lots of people use snus (illegal in the EU apart from in Scandinavia); tobacco pouches which you put under your upper lip and which can give a strong nicotine rush

Snus is disgusting

Taking snus can make you throw up in your friend’s garden

Saunas

Swedish people enjoy sitting for extend periods of time in rooms in intense heat

Swedes are very liberal when it comes to nudity in extremely warm rooms

Nudity

The Swedes like nudity in saunas

The Swedes (and other nationalities apparently) are less keen on nudity outside of saunas

Getting overly inebriated can cause all your clothes to somehow displace themselves from your body at large drunken parties

Light pollution

Light pollution sucks

Without light pollution you can look up at night and see thousands of stars instead of an ugly orange glow

Swedish lakes

Swedish lakes can be extremely cold

Running into a freezing cold lake feels a bit like when you charge into the glimmering snow-fortress of the of the Ice Queen and she doesn’t appreciate your unsolicited appearance and so she stabs you with a million ice-picks

Healthcare

Not all countries have completely free healthcare like in the UK

You should always check the expiry date of your European Health Insurance Card before moving abroad

Weighing up saving money and going to the doctors is not a very nice decision

Always properly sterilise and clean cuts and grazes

Infected cuts are extremely painful. Fevers from infected cuts are not fun and make it very hard to sleep.

If you’re lucky one of your friends may have some generic, broad-spectrum antibiotics that you can have (lesson 6.2: Self-prescribing drugs is probably a very dumb idea but this time I got lucky)